Growing up in Southern California, I always loved the outdoors and how to make things. I graduated from Brigham Young University with a B.S. in Chemistry, and from the University of Colorado, Boulder with a Ph.D. in Analytical, Environmental, and Atmospheric Chemistry. As a graduate student I built and deployed instruments for measuring glyoxal, oxygen-dimers, water vapor, nitrogen dioxide, and methyl glyoxal in Spain, the UK, Canada, Los Angeles, and on research vessels in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans as part of Rainer Volkamer’s research group. I also investigated the absorption of oxygen dimers (O4) at a range of atmospherically relevant temperatures, and the oxidation products of isoprene – one of the most abundant biogenic hydrocarbons on the planet. I continued after graduation as a post-doctoral research associate at Brookhaven National Laboratory where we measured the cloud forming properties of aerosol particles (particulate matter) in the Amazon as part of the GoAmazon field campaign from 2013 – 2015 under the guidance of Jian Wang.
I enjoy teaching a variety of classes at Snow College from Chemistry to Range Science and Forestry, drone applications and Geographic Information Systems. It is fun to have a hand in so many fun and amazing topics and applications. It is awesome to see students engage in the learning process and change the trajectory of their futures through education.
Since coming to Snow College I have continued to be actively involved in the Air Quality research community by focusing on air quality in rural areas. We maintain two air quality measurement stations, one in Richfield and one in Ephraim, on each of the college’s campuses. Past and current funding for research which involves undergraduates has come from the State of Utah, the Utah NASA Space Grant Consortium, and a current collaboration with BYU funded by the National Science Foundation.
Other interests include: understanding wildfire recovery using drone imagery, applications of drones in Natural Resources, airborne ambient monitoring of air quality indicators as well as meteorology measurements. I also helped coordinate the photographing of a 360 degree walk-through of the largest living organism – the Pando aspen clone.
